The ‘Party of Death’ is at it again. Attacks on human life have abounded in the past week.
Democrats at the NC legislature have filed a slew of new bills that take aggressive action against both SB20, The Care for Women, Children and Families Act, and crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).
NC HB 908 – Decriminalizing Reproductive Health
Filed on April 24th this bill seeks to repeal Sections 1 and 2 of SB 20 and restore the laws pertaining to abortion to their prior state before the passage of SB 20.
NC HB 977 - Crisis Pregnancy Center Accountability Study
Filed on May 1st, this bill directs the department of health and human services to study and report on crisis pregnancy centers doing business in the state; and appropriating funds for that purpose.
Then on May 2nd several similar house and senate bills were filed.
NC SB 848 - Protect Reproductive Health
A bill to codify Roe and Casey Protections; to preserve women's access to out-of-state abortions; to criminalize the interference with a woman seeking an abortion; to create a private right of action against an individual who interferes with a woman seeking an abortion; to declare the right to use contraception to prevent pregnancy shall not be limited; to prohibit the tracking of individuals who purchase emergency contraception; to clarify that individuals who provide transportation to abortions are not criminally liable; and to prohibit geofencing within a one-mile radius of a healthcare facility that provides abortions.
NC SB 859 - Redirect Crisis Pregnancy Center Funds
Redirecting funds appropriated to the department of health & and human services, division of public health, from CPCs to instead be used to support the expansion of evidence-based maternal & infant health programs; and establishing additional reporting requirements for CPCs that receive state funds.
NC HB 1033 - Taxpayer Accountability/Crisis Pregnancy Ctrs
An act enhancing taxpayer accountability for CPCs by requiring the establishment of a competitive grant process to award certain grant funds to CPCs and establishing performance standards & additional reporting requirements for CPCs.
NC HB 1000 / SB 854 - Protect Access to In Vitro FertilizationA bill to protect the right to access assisted reproductive technology: and appropriating funds to the department of health and human services, division of health benefits, to increase funding for Medicaid maternal support services.
In a long, fully capitalized paragraph which is the title, HB 908 appears to the mothership of the barrage. All these bills have similar intent and language, with the exception of HB 1000/SB 854 on In Vitro Fertilization.
HB 908’s title reads as follows (in part, for the sake of brevity).
“A BILL TO BE ENTITLED an act to repeal Parts I and II of Senate Bill 20 and reenact the laws governing abortion as they existed prior to the enactment of Senate Bill 20; to preserve North Carolina women's access to out-of-state abortions; to criminalize the interference with a woman seeking an abortion; to create a private right of action against an individual who interferes with a woman seeking an abortion; to declare the right to use contraception to prevent pregnancy shall not be limited; ….to clarify that a father does not have a right of action relating to the assistance with or performance of an abortion; to make various changes to the laws pertaining to crisis pregnancy centers; to require the Department of Health and Human Services to establish and implement measures to ensure the privacy of individuals seeking reproductive health services; and to appropriate funds to the department of health and human services for costs related to implementing and raising awareness of the changes in this act governing reproductive health services.” [i]
These people don’t hold their punches. Among this long list are some very concerning measures that would impact anyone who disagrees with the Democrat dogma of abortion-on-demand. The outright casting aside of the parental rights of the father, the criminalization of interference with women seeking abortions (presumably peaceful side-walk counsellors), and the appropriation of funds to “raise awareness” is nothing short of the abortion extremism that we have come to expect from Democrats.
Indeed, they want 1 million dollars of tax-payer’s money to promote their agenda, “for public education campaigns and training healthcare professionals” among other things.
The Democrats’ bill to “decriminalize reproductive health” is an oxymoron. No one has criminalized the reproduction of human life. It’s the killing of life that we oppose.
House Bill 977 is not much better. It doesn’t appear that HB 977 is seeking to study crisis pregnancy centers out of a desire to better assist pregnant women. It’s more like a mode of entrapment – how can rules be made to stymie the work of CPCs, defund them, and at the same time ensure that they counsel women to abort their babies.
This barrage of proposed pro-abortion legislation comes at a time when abortions have never been higher in North Carolina. The current law, under SB 20, still allows abortion up to 12 weeks, which means that 90% of abortions will continue to occur in NC, unabated.
Abortion rates rose from 30,004 in 2020 to 40,037 abortions in 2022. The increase of over 11,000 abortions is almost entirely due to out-of-state women using North Carolina as an abortion destination state, precisely due to our liberal laws. Resident abortions for 2022 were 28,855 abortions, and of these, 69.2% were done via the abortion pill, or Mifepristone. These drugs not only kill the unborn child, but they wreak havoc on the woman's body.
Finally, in another blow to SB 20 unrelated to the legislature, a May 1st ruling by U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles in Greensboro, granted a partial victory to Dr. Amy Bryant who performs abortions in North Carolina. The ruling struck down the requirement that doctors prescribe and provide the ‘abortion pill’ to patients in person, allowing for on-line visits and delivery of the abortion pills by mail. Somehow the judge argued that the in-person requirement was unlawful because it “frustrated the goal of Congress to use federal regulators to ensure the drug is distributed safely.”
It's the death of civilization when judges and lawmakers are committed to the complete abnegation of the principles on which civilization has stood; to legislate the killing of a whole class of human beings is not good enough for them – they want complete, absolute, and ‘on demand’ access to the lives of the unborn to be disposed of at the whim of the mother, and somehow this is called ‘justice.’
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[i] Language removed for the sake of brevity: “to prohibit the tracking of individuals who purchase emergency contraception; to clarify that individuals who provide transportation to abortions are not criminally liable; to prohibit geofencing within a one-mile radius of a healthcare facility that provides abortions; to criminalize the unauthorized disclosure of abortion data;” and “to ensure prompt access to abortion in the cases of medical emergency and life-limiting fetal anomalies;”
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